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Press release

Washington, D.C. – In advance of Senate’s markup of the FY16 State and Foreign Operations bill on Thursday, over sixty U.S. organizations sent a letter calling on members of the Senate Appropriations Committee calling on them to rectify potential violations of international protections for Central American refugees that were introduced by House Republicans in their draft bill.

Protests continue and 28 people were arrested in Madison, Wisconsin in reaction to Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne’s announcement that no charges will be filed in the March 6 police killing of Tony Robinson, 19.

NEW YORK— Members of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) Heidi Boghosian and Natsu Saito, with Kathleen Cleaver of the Human Rights Research Fund, today delivered an Urgent Appeal Request on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal to Juan Méndez, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. The Request addresses the life-threatening denial of medical care to the 61-year-old journalist, political activist, and human rights defender who has been described as “perhaps America’s most famous prisoner.”

NEW YORK—On March 8, 2015, President Obama issued Executive Order (EO) 13692, which declared a national emergency, calling Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” and imposed sanctions on several Venezuelan officials. Now that he has publicly backpedalled on his claim, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) calls on him to immediately withdraw the executive order.

NEW YORK—The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) stands with Marylin Zuniga, the third grade teacher at Forest Street Elementary School in Orange, NJ, who was suspended after her students wrote “get well” cards to the critically ill political prisoner and celebrated scholar, Mumia Abu-Jamal.

NEW YORK—On Thursday, April 2, two days before the 47th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., National Lawyers Guild (NLG) students and faculty will hold a day of action at law schools nationwide in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement against racist police violence and white supremacy.

The NLG International Committee’s Palestine Subcommittee has submitted a report to the ICC prosecutor with facts showing that Israeli air and ground attacks on Palestinian territory preceded Hamas and non-Hamas rocket fire, and thus could not have been in self-defense; in fact, these attacks actually sparked a vast increase in rocket fire.

DETROIT -- Rasmea Odeh, the prominent 67-year-old Palestinian American community leader and former political prisoner, will be released on $50,000 cash bond pending sentencing in March 2015. Ms. Odeh was found guilty this past November 10 of “Unlawful Procurement of Naturalization” – a past conviction on Israeli charges to which she confessed more than 40 years ago, after 45 days of brutal torture and rape by the Israeli military while in Israeli custody.